a poet's notebook

20 March 2006

The Artist's Way ~ Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

In this chapter, Cameron talks about blocks -- the whats, whys and hows. She talks about the usuals -- food, work, and sex -- and the less recognized:

For
others, an obsession with painful love places creative choice outside
their hands. Reaching for the painful thought, they become instant
victims rather than feel their own considerable power.

I've been
in that place. Though I must observe -- it provides lots of material.
This is a justified complaint of those who are not writers against
those of us who are: everything is material.

. . . note carefully that food, work, and sex are all good in themselves. It is the abuse of them that makes them creativity issues.

Interestingly,
to me, she doesn't mention shopping in this chapter. Or cigarettes,
though I suppose they fall into the drug category. When I was working
and had disposable income, nothing would soothe me better than a cruise
through the antique shops, followed by a nice smoke and a lazy -- one
might almost say creative -- process of deciding where to place the new treasure(s). Oh, for the good old days...

As
we become aware of our blocking devices -- food, busyness, alcohol,
sex, other drugs -- we can feel our U-turns as we make them. The blocks
will no longer work effectively. Over time, we will try -- perhaps
slowly at first and erratically -- to ride out the anxiety and see
where we emerge. Anxiety is fuel. We can use it to write with, paint with, work with. [emphasis mine]

Oh, yes. Sit with it. So easily said; done with such difficulty.

Cameron says a lot about workaholism, which I want to talk about, too.

In
creative recovery, it is far easier to get people to do the extra work
of the morning pages than it is to get them to do the assigned play of
an artist date. Play can make a workaholic very nervous. Fun is scary .
. . Fun leads to creativity. It leads to rebellion. It leads to feeling
your own power, and that is scary.

I confess that I've not done most of the artist dates. I could try to justify that. But I won't.

Most importantly, to me:

There is a difference between zestful work toward a cherished goal and workaholism . . . For a workaholic, work is synonymous with worth, and so we are hesitant to jettison any part of it.

A
word to all the workaholics out there: you think you can work forever.
Stamina, determination, discipline -- they will carry you through
anything. And maybe they will.

But maybe they won't. And if, like me, a day comes that you can no longer work -- you can no longer be your job
-- good luck to you. Even though I had been writing, seriously writing,
for a decade before I got sick, my self-worth -- my identity -- was
completely tied to my work. My job work. My professional, productive
self. And this made coping with, adjusting to, being ill so much
harder. This illness is the one thing that all those stubborn work
world skills cannot manage. In fact, they make it worse.

So my advice to you is just stop it right now. Don't just develop a hobby in anticipation of retirement, or to broaden your skills set
-- find something in addition to your job to feed you, to challenge
you, to push you to your edge, wherever that may be. Don't wait. And
no, don't wait for things to lighten up at work.

Cameron also writes about Drought, and I love this line: A drought is a tearless time of grief.

Matthew
Fox wrote about "endarkenment" and the Via Negativa in his book,
"Original Blessings". I loved his observation that seeds and new life
take root in the darkness, not the light.

Yes, indeed; and as Cameron observes, In a creative life, droughts are a necessity.

And then we have the topics of Fame and Competition:

.
. . the "How am I doing?" syndrome. This question is not "Is the work
going well?" this question is "How does it look to them?"

The only cure for the fame drug is creative endeavor.

She
also talks about the importance of not jumping to judge a work in
progress, which I have a lot of thoughts about -- so perhaps a later
post. In the meantime, I have a friend of forty years staying with me,
and we have a lot to talk about. We are talking, and laughing, and
walking with the dogs. This tends to pull me from my notebook -- my
paper notebook, and this electronic notebook.

If it's been said, it needn't be written; and if it needn't be written, then what am I doing here, at the page?

These quotes that I have written on the edge of my notebook called out as I was reading your post.
JESSAMYN WEST:
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
MAY SARTON:
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

BTW - thanks for the post... It brought clarity to some things that seemed murky as I went through Artist Way

So many issues are unearthed in this chapter, especially for those of us who have clung to workaholism to our own hurt and almost demise, only to realize we had bought into the ie that we were our work (even if we preached the opposite message). It's a long, long process to recover the truth - but sometimes illness delivers our own redemption. I'm sorry for whatever you are suffering; I'm speaking of myself only.